It is the year 2410, two years since the christening and departure of the grand colony ship Novae Maria, first of her kind launched from the dying & scarred world of New Tellus. With her voyage, following sibling vessels built and deployed in great fervor for a hope Terrans across Sol could only dream in eras past.

Freedom from Einsteins Cage, yes Tellus in all her marred visage was paradise with regards to the frozen deserts of Mar Valles or the orbital slums above the pale hellscapes of Hesphos. A ruined people residing upon a faded jewl, suffering rampant climate change, two modern wars, the wrath of their home star and insult to injury, a storm of stones cast wayward from the “Great Guardian”; all would see these ruined people rendered extinct, but clung they did with relentlessness on the verge of prejudice.

With the Advent of the Novae, came new technologies, new industries, and renewed hope. Efficiency was second nature to a ruined people living from scrap, Infrastructure slowly but surely took shape from partially restored factories and with it, semblance of sustainable expansion not only across the breath of Sol, but the Stars Beyond.

However meager it may have been initially.

Until her brilliance shone upon Tellus

Yes, in that year of renewed hope when humankind crawled about their home star and fledgling steps into others; An anomaly was detected, Surging forth in realspace at speeds not matched by any celestial object in the 300 years humankind had observed their space with any real competence. It was under year out in the void, and within the year it would be over Tellus.

Extrasolar Entities you say?, In the last three centuries Humans had little in the way to believe complex life, much less space faring resided even within their own galaxy. Sure Mar Valles had fossilized bacterium in its frozen wastes and subterranean caverns, but even the handful of worlds meekly undergoing colonization bore little in the way of intellectual intrigue towards a people born from cataclysm after cataclysm

….After Cataclysm

Yes the distance between stars is so vast, we propagate through the void faster than ever thought imaginable, through another realm equally as infinite and as mysterious as realspace. Nothing of intelligence and competence could possibly traverse the stars so inefficiently, so ineffectively and be of concern….. right? Sol was abuzz of the curiosity, the object’s approach did not intercept the old Jovian worlds, and Mar Valles would be much out of the way by the time the object was in feasible range, a Node Jump was simply not in the cards by current understanding.

And so a contingent of vessels were rallied as a precaution, the largest of which were two of the original successor colony ships that operated along with the Novae Maria. While not armed, an element of Human hubris rationalized their deployment being the fastest vessels available.

Off they went, eight vessels strong aligning with a nearby star to “pull” them in range of the anomaly.